Thousands of people had arrived to attend Kamala Harris’ rally in Michigan on August 7.
Washington:
Donald Trump amplified a wave of false claims on social media that his opponent Kamala Harris used artificial intelligence to fabricate a photo of her supporters at a rally in Michigan last week — a claim debunked by photos and videos.
“Did anyone notice Kamala cheating at the airport? There was no one on the plane, and she ‘AI’d it and showed a huge ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DON’T EXIST!” the Republican presidential candidate wrote on Sunday in the first of a series of posts on his Truth Social platform.
“There was no one there!” he added in a second message.
Live footage and photos from numerous media outlets, including AFP, showed the crowd of supporters packing an airport hangar and walking onto the tarmac to see Harris and her newly announced running mate Tim Walz.
The photo appeared to have been first posted by a Harris campaign official, who received it from another aide.
“This is a real photo of a crowd of 15,000 people for Harris-Walz in Michigan,” wrote the campaign’s official rapid response page on social media platform X.
The campaign shared an original copy of the image – which appears dimmer than the high-exposure version available online and highlighted by Trump – with the BBC, telling the British broadcaster that it was ‘not modified by AI in any way’ .
Matthew Stamm, a digital forensics expert from Drexel University, analyzed the image for AFP and said his specialized software “didn’t find any evidence that the image was generated by AI.”
Hany Farid of the University of California-Berkeley also told AFP that two models designed to identify traces of AI have shown no evidence that the technology was used in the image.
The false claim circulated in right-wing and conspiratorial circles on social media before it reached Trump, who shared a message from conservative commentator Chuck Callesto focusing on the lack of a reflection of the crowd on the side of the plane.
Experts said the crowd was likely not directly mirrored due to the distance between the plane and the audience and the angle of the reflection.
“The reflection on the fuselage of the aircraft and the engine will show the ground directly in front of the aircraft,” Stamm told AFP.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
